Variety’s Entertainment Marketing Summit is set to take place on April 24, offering a platform for studio executives, stakeholders, and marketing professionals to engage in meaningful discussions about their strategies and the broader trends affecting the industry during these unpredictable times in Hollywood. The event will be hosted at NeueHouse Hollywood in Los Angeles and is proudly presented by Deloitte. Attendees can expect a full day of in-person panels covering a variety of topics, including impact marketing, the gaming economy, artificial intelligence, and sports fandom, featuring notable speakers such as Issa Rae and Nicholas Sparks.
Insights from Industry Leaders
This year’s summit comes on the heels of significant achievements for many panelists. Following the record-breaking opening weekend of “A Minecraft Movie,” Cameron Curtis, Warner Bros’ EVP of worldwide digital marketing, plans to showcase how the studio effectively utilized social media content creators to amplify the film’s visibility. “We engaged them early, we cast them in our movie, we made them co-pilots of our campaign, which I think is a strategy everyone should be embracing as marketers,” Curtis remarked. “We’re really seeing that pay off.”
The panels will feature a diverse array of executives from prominent companies such as Warner Bros, Amazon Music, AGBO, and Netflix. Christian Parkes, chief marketing officer at Neon, is eager to learn about the innovative approaches major studios are considering in response to shifting audience preferences. “We’re having a generational shift in which the power and influence of cinema is kind of waning,” Parkes noted. “I had a number of studios reach out to me and the agencies that I work with after ‘Longlegs’ asking ‘How did you do that?’ We’re the smallest fish in the biggest pond, so with everything they have at their disposal, they shouldn’t be calling me for answers. It should be the other way around.”
This marks the eighth consecutive year that Deloitte has sponsored the summit. For China Widener, Deloitte’s vice chair for technology, media, and telecom, the opportunity to convene with industry leaders is invaluable. “It’s where we lean in from a research perspective,” Widener explained. “To the extent that we can bring a level of research and different points of view, we can help those in the industry think about not just now but next. That’s an alignment that just makes a lot of sense for us.”
With over 25 years of experience in the industry, Widener recognizes the importance of initiating conversations about the growing influence of Gen Z as a consumer demographic. “I’m senior enough to have lived through the evolution where content was pushed on us as people who watched and it set a tone,” she reflected. “What we’re seeing is that consumers are actually driving more expectations and setting the tone for what they want to see.”
As Warner Bros prepares for the upcoming releases of Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and James Gunn’s “Superman,” Curtis and his team are focused on revitalizing their social media presence with genre-specific channels. “Tailoring that approach and thinking about how we create the biggest footprint possible on social media is something I’m keeping in mind,” he stated. “On ‘F1,’ for example, we had all the drivers engage in our trailer debut. So for the first time ever, all the F1 drivers live-streamed a trailer launch.”
Coming straight from CinemaCon, Parkes views Variety’s Entertainment Marketing Summit as an opportunity for studios to showcase their offerings in a more dynamic manner. “It’s great to see everything on display at CinemaCon, but everything looks a bit the same. And there’s kind of a formula that I feel we’re all sticking to — I don’t like that,” he expressed. “I’d like [the studios] to come in and blow our socks off with exciting, original, and unique ways to engage audiences.”
